Employability of graduates is high on the agenda today so whether you are a student looking for a marketing career or an academic teaching the subject, there’s a wealth of IDM initiatives to support you.

The IDM Business-to-Business Marketing Council

Business-to-business marketing is a distinct, cross-marketing discipline. While it shares common ground with B2C marketing, there are substantial differences in the challenges that B2B marketing presents and the strategies, tactics and techniques that B2B marketers must apply to meet them.

The IDM B2B Council aims to push back frontiers of knowledge within B2B, give it an infrastructure of learning, and opportunities to share best practices. It aims to raise the profile of B2B marketing, give the discipline the recognition it deserves - and B2B marketers a specialism to be proud of.

If you would like to put yourself or a colleague forward to join the council, please email jessreilly@theidm.com.

Members of the IDM Business-to-Business Marketing Council

Richard Robinson, Director, Google (Council Chair)Richard has spent over 15 years assisting companies in the development and implementation of effective go-to-market strategies. In addition to leading many strategic marketing initiatives across various business and technology areas, he is a seasoned presenter at industry events. Prior to Google, Richard was VP at IDC, where he led its consulting and marketing services business in Europe. Richard also led the client services division of IDG's International team based in EMEA.

Andy Grant, Manging Partner, Junction Marketing (Vice Chair)Andy is an international marketing leader with over 16 years B2B marketing experience. He has worked for a number of blue-chip technology vendors, including 3Com, Iomega, Avaya and Nortel. In 2009, Andy co-founded Bowan Arrow with Louise Grant, launching an independent channel marketing consultancy to build stronger vendor-partner relationships. Clients include ShoreTel, VMware, HP, Brocade & Avaya.

Whether defining go-to-market strategies or providing partner marketing training, health checks and roundtables, Andy ensures the right marketing initiatives are used to create business opportunities and a measured return. Andy is vice chair of the IDM B2B Marketing Council, loves rugby, tennis, cooking and good wine (but not always in that order). Tweets as @channelman.

Andrew Buckley, Head of Commercial Products for Europe, MastercardAndrew Buckley is Head of Commercial Products for Europe. In this role, he leads the development and commercialization of the MasterCard innovative commercial products and solutions that serve small business, mid- and large market organizations and public sector institutions in Europe. Prior to joining MasterCard, Andrew served as Vice President for Global Corporate Card Product Management at American Express. In his role, he was responsible for launching news products, such as Corporate Centurion, and new markets such as Russia. Previously at American Express, he was Vice President for Global Corporate Marketing, where he drove the shift to digital acquisition.

He also held senior Sales and Technology roles with American Express, in both the UK and USA. Prior to this, he was a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and before that held strategy, sales and marketing roles with major Telecoms and IT companies. This experience included the startup of Telco’s such as Cegetel in France and BT NIS in Japan. Andrew holds an undergraduate Electronic Engineering degree and MBA. He is also an Advisory Board member at the IDM (Institute of Direct & Digital Marketing) and a doctoral student in Innovation at Manchester Business School.

Julia Cole, UK&I Marketing Manager, HPJulia Cole previously worked for Xerox Global Services and has held senior marketing, training and sales roles within the print industry for over 25 years. At HP, Julia’s extensive role includes managing the sales channels and marketing team for HP’s broad portfolio of Indigo and Inkjet Web Press products, taking an active role in everything from sales lead generation to PR, direct marketing and event management. During the last 8 years heading up the marketing team, Julia has driven numerous initiatives aimed at growing her customers’ businesses as well as communicating the benefits of digital printing to the wider publishing and marketing industry sectors. She also worked extensively with the BPIF to establish the organisation’s latest graduate training programme

David Edwards, Head of Marketing & Communications, Baker & McKenzie LLPDavid has over 15 years marketing experience, working for Global blue-chip organisations. Having worked in industries as diverse as leisure and entertainment, financial and professional services, he has experience across the full marketing mix including both traditional and digital media. David believes in marketing as a core driver for revenue growth and is passionate about the value that marketing brings to an organisation.

Prior to Baker & McKenzie, David worked in a variety of national and international marketing roles at EY, Mercer, Abbey (now Santander) and Manpower.

He is also passionate about diversity and inclusion in business and believes organisations could do more to promote and engage around issues such as equality and social mobility.

Joe Edwards F IDM, Digital & Social Director, Marketing Options InternationalJoe Edwards is a Creative Strategic Planner, who began his career long before the words Digital and Social became the buzz words they now. In 2001 (just after the dot com bubble burst) he founded a Web and Digital Agency and after successes with Universal and Orange decided it was time to move more into the the realms of marketing. Over the years Joe has worked both client side and agency, working with with Startups to Large Enterprise organisations in both B2B and B2C environments.

He has worked with such organisations as Adobe, Citi Bank, RBS, Visa, Toyota, HP, Symantec, TfL, Studio Canal & eOne Entertainment to across Digital, Social and Mobile marketing disciplines. He is also part of The Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing (IDM) Marketing Advisory Council and delivers training on behalf of the IDM which includes the one day workshop on ‘Content Marketing’ and 'The IDM Award in Social Media (SocM)'.

Prof. Bryan Foss MBA, F IDM, FIOD, FCIM, C Eng, Senior Independent Director, Motive Television plcBryan is the Visiting Professor of B2B marketing with Bristol Business School, also an independent non-executive director (NED) and board level adviser. He is currently senior independent director and Chair of Audit & Risk with Motive Television plc and aSource Global Group. In addition Bryan provides independent board level advice to numerous commercial business development enterprises and also assists a small number of leading customer management related companies. Bryan is recognised globally for his work on Board Effectiveness, KAM, CRM, Customer Experience Management, Customer Retention and Development. As a business book author he continues to write regularly for a number of marketing and board governance related websites. Bryan can be contacted at bryanfoss@gmail.com and his website is www.fossinitiatives.com.

Pete Jakob, Owner and Principal Consultant, Purple Salix LimitedPete is a member of the IDM B2B Marketing Council and runs his own marketing consultancy helping forward-thinking B2B companies transform their marketing to thrive in the era of the empowered customer. Previously he was at IBM for 28 years in both sales and marketing roles at a UK, European and Global level. His experiences have included product marketing, channel marketing and new market development. He thrives in areas of change and uncertainty and has leading critical transformation projects around the areas of marketing automation, lead nurturing and database marketing. Pete is driven by a passion for the B2B marketing profession along with a relentless curiosity to explore new ideas and approaches.

Clare Lawson, Managing Partner OgilvyOne, Head of B2BClare is Managing Partner at OgilvyOne, responsible for the agencies B2B accounts, and part of the OgilvyOne Leadership Team. In this role she is helping create programmes to ensure our clients learn together about the advancements in B2B marketing alongside driving innovative customer engagement solutions to clients business problems. After a brief stint working in agencies in the North East, Clare moved to London and OgilvyOne in 2003. In her ten years with Ogilvy she has run all but a few of the agencies b2b accounts: BT Business, Blackberry, Zurich, British Gas Business, Sage, Openzone, Tradespace, IBM and UPS. Obsessed with driving business performance, Clare's teams have helped BT become the market dominant Business Broadband provider, launched successful sub-brands for Zurich Insurance, and developed social campaigns creating 300k users of Tradespace in one year. Awarded IDM Diamond Award and DMA's for BT loyalty work, and the B2B Grand Prix for British Gas Business in 2012.

Lawrence Mitchell, Marketing Director, RBILawrence Mitchell's career spans over 15 years and includes both B2B and B2C experience, with an emphasis on using online channels to market. Lawrence has held leading roles for a both start-up and blue chip organisations including the Financial Times Group and Reed Business Information where he is currently Marketing Director.

Richard Perry, Partner, FoundedRichard started Founded in January 2012 with a simple promise to our clients; by using strategy and planning as our centre of gravity, we move people. Currently we have 20 founders including planners, analysts, creatives, technologists, psychologists, behaviourists and general collaborators. We're delivering on our promise for clients like TripAdvisor, Virgin Unite, ZipCar, Total and Hays. Over the last 20 years Richard has worked with a wide range of brands from American Express, T-Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, Xerox, Oracle and Nokia. Before setting up Founded Richard was COO at Gyro, an agency that he helped grow from 3 to 650 people in 17 countries before leaving in early 2011 to plan the launch of Founded.

Shane Redding Hon F IDM, Think DirectShane is an independent consultant with over 20 years' international business to business and consumer direct marketing experience. Shane provides strategic direct marketing advice and practical training to both end users and DM suppliers; clients include Sage plc, the Institute of Directors, Dennis Publishing and Royal Mail. Specialising in data, databases and analysis, Shane enjoys helping large and small businesses use direct marketing to significantly improve the bottom line.

In addition to her consultancy business, Shane also holds a number of non-executive directorships and board advisory roles including Livingstone Partners, Infoline Conferences and Total Hotspots.

Shane was the B2B Council's last Chair and recently awarded an IDM honorary fellowship. Shane is senior tutor on the IDM Certificate in Business-to-Business Marketing and lectures on topics including CRM, lead generation, data and digital analysis. Other past industry roles have included vice chair of FEDMA, UK DMA board director, sales and marketing director of Mardev (a Reed Elsevier company).

Adam Sharp, Group MD, CleverTouchAdam has over 20 years marketing experience, he has held various Senior Marketing Management positions in large global organisations including IBM, Iron Mountain and Quantum as well as some more entrepreneurial VC backed ventures including Larry Ellison’s Pillar Data Systems, since acquired by Oracle.

Adam founded CleverTouch in 2008, a UK company specialising in B2B Marketing Automation (MA) deployment and optimisation. To date CleverTouch has helped more clients on more MA platforms than anyone globally. As a thought leader in the MA space, CleverTouch has also created a number of its own complementary apps including CrowdVu, a tool for social search and social intelligence and FunnelVu, a revenue intelligence application.

Adam is a frequent speaker on the topic of MA and Marketing Infrastructure and teaches the MA component of Manchester Metropolitan University’s MSc in Digital Marketing.

Adam has an BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Psychology from Cardiff University and a Masters in Business Administration from Southampton University.

Scott Stockwell, Head of Brand & Communications, IBM UK and IrelandScott leads IBM's brand and communications function for the UK and Ireland with a mission to make a material impact on IBM’s reputation in the market and with its employees around the unifying ‘Smarter Planet’ agenda. A strong proponent of the power of communications to drive change, Scott has successfully delivered Global, European and UK roles that have galvanised employees around IBM’s Centennial, changed customers’ sustainability behaviour through IBM's partnership with 'Start' and driven ‘hyper-growth’ through IBM’s web and tele channel, amongst others. Scott is currently contributing to IBM's thinking around the advocacy at scale that digital capabilities can drive for brands that engage their corporate characters authentically.

Scott joined IBM from PwC Consulting bringing a background of client facing, marketing & PR leadership and brand management experience from Coopers & Lybrand, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Monday. Prior to his B2B roles, Scott spent thirteen years in the B2C space with Marks and Spencer in roles ranging from customer service in UK stores, through textiles merchandising, technical development and staff training in the retailer’s UK and Canadian Head Offices.

John Watton, ‎EMEA Marketing Director, Digital Marketing at AdobeJohn leads marketing for Adobe Marketing Cloud in Europe, responsible for the marketing strategy and execution of Adobe’s key focus growth market, digital marketing. He brings over 20 years of experience in software and eCommerce marketing in senior European roles at technology companies including Oracle, SAP, Ariba, Microsoft and Adobe, as well as global roles at Expedia Affiliate Network, Cramer and ShipServ.

His experience spans all marketing disciplines including digital marketing, product marketing, lead nurturing, social media marketing, public relations, analyst relations, and strategic marketing management. A regular speaker and blogger, he was voted a TopRank Top UK Online Marketing Influencer in 2013 and was B2B Marketing Magazine's Marketer of the Year 2009/10.

Chris Wilson, Managing Director, EarnestChris has spent over 15 years in B2B marketing, working with organisations such as Vodafone, BT, Fujitsu, Cisco, Capgemini, HP, Cognizant, SAP and Allianz. Chris founded full service agency Earnest in 2009 to help B2B marketing step out of the shade and stop being labelled a poor cousin to FMCG. It’s an ongoing mission... In his spare time, Chris chairs the Association of Business to Business Agencies and is a member of the Business Superbrands Council.

Claire Wood, Director, Brand & Marketing, DeloitteClaire has spent over 15 years specialising in providing marketing advice for Deloitte, the professional services firm. Claire has extensive experience leading strategic marketing initiatives across multiple areas of Deloitte’s business both in the UK and internationally. With experience across the full marketing mix, Claire believes passionately in helping the marketers of today and tomorrow develop the skills they need to ensure marketing remains a core driver of the business.

Kirsty Dawe Dip IDM Dip DigM, Director, Really B2B

Kirsty is co-founder and director of award winning B2B marketing agency ReallyB2B whose work includes campaigns for clients such as the BBC, Orange Business Services, Compass Group, Santander and HSBC. She is also Marketing Director for the MarketMakers group. Prior to this, Kirsty headed up marketing for leading IP tracking software firm Lead Forensics. Having worked in a results driven marketing environment for over 15 years on both client and agency side Kirsty is passionate about the measurability of B2B marketing and delivering campaigns that are completely accountable, providing results right through to the bottom line. She is especially interested in emerging B2B channels in the digital space and how these can be integrated with more traditional approaches in order to increase engagement and conversion.